Stuart Craig back for ‘Fantastic Beasts,’ shooting to begin this summer

While promoting his new family film Paddington today, Fantastic Beasts producer David Heyman revealed a couple of tidbits about the upcoming Harry Potter spinoff.

Heyman, who produced all eight Harry Potter movies, told Collider that Stuart Craig, the production designer behind the entire Wizarding World series, is returning for Fantastic Beasts. “The experience of conjuring up these worlds is such fun,” Heyman said. “So to do it with [Rowling] and with [screenwriter] Steve Kloves and [producer] Lionel Wigram is involved too, and with [director] David Yates, and Stuart Craig will be designing it; it’s great. It’s exciting, and it’s a great world to return to.”

The news isn’t all too shocking, especially when you remember that Craig, pictured above, has stayed active in the Potter world even after Deathly Hallows, Part 2 hit theaters. Most notably, Craig has been working with Universal to design the Wizarding World of Harry Potter lands, including the new Diagon Alley expansion in Orlando which opened last summer.

Heyman also revealed that Fantastic Beasts will begin shooting in “late summer.” Until today we only knew that the plan was to start filming in 2015.

As for casting? “Early, early, early days. Really early days. I mean we’re at the very beginning.”

Interestingly, Heyman also commented on the fact that Fantastic Beasts will be a trilogy with this remark: “We’re making just one film, but I believe there’s been talk about it being three. But we’re just talking about it as one.”

One could interpret that comment – particularly the last sentence – as meaning that the first film will have a firm ending, but maybe he just means that they don’t have a script for the next film. After all, we know that J.K. Rowling only just finished writing the first.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens November 2016.

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